Posts Tagged ‘glass bottles’

For many years we have gotten calls from businesses who want to use glass bottles but want to start with “just a few.” In our website FAQ we have this information: “Most glass factories sell directly only in very large quantities, usually 50,000 items or more.” Now variable weight feeders are making it possible for large glass container manufacturers to make as few as 10,000 bottles of one size while making quantities of another size as well.

We first heard about variable weight feeders when we went to the Verallia North America website while we were updating our information for the recently released 2012 Glass Factory Directory. We learned that Verallia is now offering to produce smaller quantities of glass bottles in several colors and sizes using their “Flex-Run” service. This certainly could make it possible for companies to start using glass bottles without the necessity to use their resources to keep a large stock of bottles in inventory.

VOA of France is using what they call “Flex Line” technology to make small runs of glass bottles.

It has always been said that consumers prefer glass to plastic containers (honey in glass). The possibility of producing “small runs” will improve the competitive situation for glass bottles and possibly increase the number of products available in glass!

Good news this week is that Cameron Family Glass Packaging of Kalama, Wash. has shipped its first glass wine bottles! Congratulations to the Cameron Family and the employees, many of whom have come to Cameron from other glass bottle manufacturing facilities!

In a recent article, the Long Island Business Press stated that the Studebaker Company, which made automobiles until March, 1966, was started by a family named Graham, which they said “started out as bottle makers in Indiana, where they pioneered the technique of upside-down manufacturing, which allowed the molten glass to form a thick lip, making it strong enough to hold a cap instead of a cork.” I have never heard this before – and there are things I do not know about glass history – can anyone tell me more about whether or not this note on the history of the glass industry is correct?

There was a family emergency and I did not make it to the Glass Problems Conference in Columbus in early November. If you were there, write and tell me what you found most useful about the presentations or the people you talked to.